Stratics Veteran

Maybe the first thing you should think about is : what do you want to do with your tamer ?

PVP, PVM, champ, peerless etc ...

Will you spend a lot of time taming, trying to find the best pets or will you settle with the first decent one you'll find and be done and go hunt ?
Or even have good tamer friends who can provide you with good pets, maybe even already trained ones if you don't like the hassle of doing it yourself

How do you like to play ? Do you want to be a "from behind the scene" tamer and let your pet do most of the damage while you heal, and control the crown when needed? Or do you want to fight at your pet side and just want for it to tank and help along ?

The template you need very much depends on all those points.

I don't have any insight about necro tamers, I never played a necro template of any sort so I can't help you with this. But I think it would be easier to give you hints and ideas if we knew what exactly you're expecting from your tamer.

It is a very powerful template that combines the tanking potential of taming with enough evaluating intelligence and weaving to deal a decent amount of spell damage. In my opinion, once a person learns this template, it is the easiest character to play. Basically, you can invis safely while monsters attack your pet, then cast some cursory spells to help your pet finish the job.

Pros
--Very safe to play, thanks to gift of life, renewal, and attunement
--Easy to keep pets alive, due to gift of renewal, vet, and magery
--Decent amount of damage, due to eval and weaving

Cons
--So easy as to become boring
--Damage output is less than a good archer/tamer's would be
--Without your pet, you basically become a sub-par version of a mage/weaver

This is currently one of my all-time favorite tamer templates. This template combines the uber l33t damage output of a chiv/archer with the tanking power of a pet. However, it is much more complicated to play than a mage/weaver/tamer, because in addition to keeping your pet healed via vet and close wounds, you must constantly be tending to your archery, targeting enemies and casting EOO/consecrate weapon. This template, when played right, is the number one top damager in UO, as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, without invisibility, it is not as safe to play as a mage/weaver.

Pros
--Top damage output
--Very fun to play, keeps you on your toes
--Even without your pet, you can rack up amazing amounts of damage

Cons
--Less safe, without invisibility
--Requires a good suit, which can be difficult/expensive to put together.

Pros
--The ideal champ spawn template: invis yourself, allow spawn to target your dragon, then wither away
--Animate dead summons do not count as summons, which means you can have a greater dragon and three additional summons

This template is a hybrid of the mage/tamer and the archer/tamer. The benefit is that you can safely invis when in danger and can use archer for damage, instead of spells, to save on mana costs. The downside is that, by being both a mage and an archer, you become slightly less adept at both. You won't have much mana for your mage spells, so you'll need a lot of mana increasing items (40 lower mana cost, too, is a requisite on any suit, including this one). Because your bows have to be spellchanneling, it may prove challenging/expensive to find a good bow.

That's correct. As another poster mentioned, mind blast's damage is based on magery (skill) and intelligence (stat). From UOguide:

This spell now deals an amount of cold damage based upon the caster's Magery and Intelligence values. (40-42 Damage at 100 Magery 100 Int) Elemental Resistances reduce damage. There is a 1-2 second delay between targetting and spell activation.

Click to expand...

I mentioned poison strike above. Pain spike is ok, but keep in mind that the damage is only temporary.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

Thank you for the very helpful insight. I think I'm just going to stick with a mage/tamer for now. Thanks!!

Click to expand...

One template that might appeal to you is the mage tamer with hide and stealth. Both skills are fast and easy to train, and you won't need to scroll either of them up, so it's good if you're not really sure what you want to do But you will find it much easier to survive with your tamer while you learn the ropes. Once you're accustomed to handling pets you can change your template for something else if you fancy it.

Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players.